Sad and Proud, Space Shuttle Workers Await Last Countdown

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As NASA winds down its space shuttle program, thousands of
workers are preparing to say goodbye to three spacecraft they've
spent years taking care of.

The mood is bittersweet at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in
Florida, where the shuttles Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis
have launched from, and usually landed, over the last 30 years.

"It's like going out to your garage, you have an old car out
there that you rebuilt yourself and you know every inch of it,
you know every bolt, every washer, every little scratch on it,
and you wax it every day," said Tim Keyser, a lead technician in
the Orbiter Processing Facility's Mid-body Shop, who has worked
on the shuttles since 1988. "That's what I do to these orbiters."

NASA has one more shuttle flight planned — the
July 8 liftoff of Atlantis — before all three orbiters are
grounded for good. Discovery and Endeavour have already completed
their final spaceflights, and are now undergoing processing for
their next lives as artifacts.

"It sucks"
saying goodbye to the space shuttles, said Erin
Schlichenmaier, lead thermal protection system engineer for
Endeavour, who works for the NASA contractor United Space
Alliance. "It's pretty sad to have them stop flying."

Yet Schlichenmaier expressed the hope that retiring the space
shuttles would allow NASA to turn its attention to building new
spacecraft, which has been precluded for the last three decades
by the high cost of running the shuttle program. [ The
Most Memorable Space Shuttle Missions ]

Much of that cost has come from the large number of workers
required to refurbish the ships between each launch. As the
program winds down, about half of the United Space Alliance
employees at NASA have already been laid off.

"I have not been laid off yet, but a lot of people have,"
Schlichenmaier told SPACE.com. "That's really awful because it's
like a family out here. We're out here all the time, we joke, you
know everybody, so it's been really sad to see people go."

After the orbiters are retired, NASA plans to develop spacecraft
capable of traveling to a nearby asteroid and to Mars,
destinations beyond the reach of the space shuttles.

"You never forget that it's special, cause it is, and I'll always
treasure being a part of it," said Charles Bell, another United
Space Alliance employee.

He and others said they felt they had the best jobs in the world.

"I don't even look at it as a job. It's like a hobby and I get
paid," said Bill Powers, a senior aerospace technician at the
Orbiter Processing Facility's Forward Shop at KSC. Powers has
worked on the shuttle program for 27 years, since 1984.

"I still remember the first day I saw one," he said of the
shuttles, during an interview inside the cockpit of shuttle
Discovery. "And part of me always flies right here behind the
commander, that's where my spirit is."

The space shuttles have each been assigned to retire to a
different museum around the country.

Discovery is headed to the Smithsonian National Air and Space
Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center outside Washington, D.C., while
Endeavour will go to the California Science Center in Los
Angeles, and Atlantis will make the short trip over to the
visitor center at Kennedy Space Center.

Before they can be put on public display, however, the hazardous
materials on the shuttle, such as the fuel and oxidizers, must be
removed. NASA is also taking out some critical systems like the
main engines to study and potentially reuse on future projects.
These will be replaced with dummy versions so that the orbiters
look exactly as they did while flying.

Though it's too bad the vehicles won't travel to space anymore,
many shuttle workers said they were glad they'd serve
inspirational and educational purposes now.

"We knew that was coming," Keyser said while standing on a
platform overlooking shuttle Discovery's payload bay. "Hopefully,
[the public] will get a better perspective about what we've done
over the last 30 years with these orbiters. It's pretty good that
everyone will get to see it now."

Keyser will be part of a team that travels with Discovery to the
Smithsonian to help install it there.

"Luckily for me, I get to go up and actually put it where it's
going to be permanently, so I'm looking forward to that," he
said. Afterward, he plans to visit Discovery at the museum
"yearly, as much as I can."